Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Dire

In the immortal words of Beavis and Butthead, "This suckth like nothing has ever suckth before."

Ireland has chosen its entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. Follow the links here on the RTE website to watch a video clip of Dervish singing it. Dire, dire, dire. I won't even go into all that's wrong with this--not, mind you, because I think this is beneath Dervish. I don't think it is, and yes, I do think the song is shite, and I'll leave it there. It's just a conglomeration of badness that makes me wonder if this isn't a "My Lovely Horse" situation...a Father Ted episode when Ted and Dougal's ridiculously awful song is selected to make sure Ireland loses the contest to avoid the expense of hosting the next year's awards. Sure, viewers supposedly select the winner, but if all the choices are bad....

8 comments:

I won't be able to watch the Dervish clip until I get home from work, but I had heard a while ago that they were doing this, and recently read a few other online commentaries about the actual performance that basically echo yours. So I'm prepared for the hilarity and/or disgust that will ensue when I get home and click the ol' mouse.

As for Cathy Jordan's hair, I remember that from the first time I saw them at the rain-soaked Wolf Trap festival (I think the last one there before it switched to being the even more rain-soaked fairgrounds festival) up until just a year or two ago when I saw them at National Geographic, Cathy Jordan was always sporting the 'do rag. I wondered if she even had hair, or if maybe she was a baldy like Rob. Or Josh. Or, um, me. I didn't see her up close at that last show, but I recall thinking then that the full head of hair she was suddenly sporting didn't exactly look real. Neither for that matter does the hair in the still from the video clip. (Although admittedly it is a teeny video clip and not HDTV.) Do you think maybe she's wearing a wig, like yer suddenly hairless woman Ms. Spears is now?

Hmmm. Possibly. Whether it's her hair or a wig, it's certainly done within an inch of its 'life'! I'd have to watch the video again to look, but I'm not sure I want to put myself through that!

One does have to wonder why, if her hair were that healthy and thick, she covered it up so often, especially in the early Dervish days.... My guess is that she just has mousy hair, rather than that she's bald, though that's a funny thought that makes me think of the Roald Dahl kids' book The Witches....

And did you watch the -other- three songs that were in the running? (They're all on YouTube.) They're just as bad! Makes you wonder why they even picked a trad band. There's only one that has any instrumental stuff going on other than Whistle Noodling.

I've never seen Cathy Jordan's hair before, either -- it certainly could be a wig. I barely recognized her.

Alas, when I got home yesterday and tried to watch the Dervish clip, it wouldn't play on my computer. Even though I let RealPlayer install some updates that were supposed to help. Maybe it's a Mac thing, I dunno. But for now at least, Dervish remains on life support with me. I have to say, though, that the last time I saw them, which was probably two years ago during the St. Pat's touring frenzy, they were fine. The music was the same as always, and Cathy Jordan in her wig really endeared herself to me (but not to anyone else in the room, apparently, from all the grumbling I heard going out) by making pointed anti-Bush comments throughout the show. So perhaps this Eurovision thing is an abberation. Maybe there are big bucks on the line that could keep them afloat for a long time while they continue to play trad, not unlike all those musicians who rode the Riverdance train for a while to earn some cash. Or, then again, maybe the whole band and not just Cathy Jordan has wigged out. It's happened before. So, as Kent Brockman would say, only time will tell...